Preliminary results of Egypt’s strung-out parliamentary elections suggest that Islamists will be easily the largest and most potent political force

IF THE results of the first batch of Egypt's elections are replicated across the country, the Islamists will emerge as a lot more powerful than most analysts predicted. In a string of villages and cities, including Cairo, Alexandria and Port Said, the Muslim Brothers seem to have scored between 30% and 40%, which would earn them at least 40% of seats in the People's Assembly, the legislature's lower house. Even more strikingly, the Salafists, who espouse a more extreme and puritanical Islamist ideology, have far exceeded expectations, in some places getting a good 20% of the vote. So the combined tally looks set to give assorted Islamists a straight majority of seats in the assembly. A new political dynamic is in the offing.

When you hold real elections after six decades of fraudulent ones there are sure to be bumps and surprises. Numerous procedural glitches inevitably marred the first stage of the voting, on November 28th, for a third of the assembly's 498 seats. But in general the ballot seemed free and fair. Final results from two more rounds of voting for the assembly are not expected until mid-January, followed by still more stages of voting for the Shura Council, the upper house. It seems unlikely that the Islamists will lose ground in rural areas where people have yet to cast their vote.

This augurs an important geostrategic shift, considering that Egypt is the most populous and influential Arab country, and has long been closely allied with the West, especially the United States. It also marks a striking internal change, an historic triumph for a political trend that has endured 60 years of repression under successive army-backed presidents. The Islamists' strong performance in both cities and villages represents a challenge to the largely secular middle-class protest movement that spearheaded Egypt's revolution and felt empowered by its show of street force. Yet equally it challenges the conservative remnants of the ousted regime, whose interests are still protected by the generals who assumed power in February, after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak.

As if to herald an emerging struggle, representatives of the army and the Brotherhood inadvertently issued clashing statements as the votes were being counted. General Mamdouh Shaheen, a member of the 24-man ruling army council, told a television interviewer that at least until presidential elections are held next summer the army will retain the right to hire and fire governments. But Muhammad Morsi, the head of the Freedom and Justice Party, a political front for the Brotherhood, declared that whoever wins a majority in parliament should name the government, which he suggested should be a coalition representing a range of forces.

These differences look particularly intractable because they coincide with renewed protests that have already forced the resignation of one army-appointed cabinet. The new prime minister-designate, Kamal Ganzouri, a trusted Mubarak-era apparatchik, has been struggling to assemble a cabinet amid calls for him to stand down in favour of someone with revolutionary credentials. Pressed already by secular forces demanding that they relinquish power, the generals may find themselves further squeezed by an Islamist parliamentary block with unimpeachable democratic legitimacy.

Since the revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood, keen for elections to go ahead, has assiduously wooed the generals, posing as a centrist force for stability in contrast to leftist rowdies and the Salafists' bearded hotheads. If the highly disciplined 80-year-old movement, which has been a wellspring of Islamist streams across the region, does indeed end up with some 40% of parliamentary seats, it may then have to choose either to align with secular forces or be pulled to the right by the Salafists.

All this is plainly bad news for Egypt's secularists. The Copts, Egypt's main Christian minority, comprising about a tenth of the 85m-odd population, particularly fear the Salafists. Yet secular candidates fared encouragingly well in many districts. Inexperienced liberal parties still have a chance to regain some ground in later rounds, particularly if they forge alliances: Egypt's convoluted election rules actually favour mid-sized parties over the smallest and biggest.

Some, however, are consoling themselves in traditional Egyptian fashion, with humour. One half-hearted joke holds that by Monopoly rules, the Islamists who have taken four North African countries in a row can now build houses and hotels. An Egyptian also posted this wry Tweet: “Dear west, no need to freak out over the Islamists win. Many many Egyptians are doing that for you just fine.”